Chapter 5879 Changing Strategies 5879 Changing Strategies This wasn't working. Ves initially thought that the Subjugation King was kind enough to turn his energy barrier into a tribulation lightning dispenser. As long as Ves was willing to bear the pain of tribulation lightning zapping through his body, he only had to approach and strike the energy barrier in order to receive another dose of tribulation energies. His body broke down and reformed into a slightly stronger version after every strike. Ves felt as if he had turned into the lab rat that had learned that pressing a button on the wall would dispense a piece of cheese for him to eat. Again and again, Ves picked himself up and tried to punch the energy barrier in various ways. None of his attacks weakened the energy barrier in the slightest. Neither the Dread Marines firing at the clone of the Subjugation King in the distance nor the various punches and kicks from Ves broke the equilibrium. That was bad, because Ves could not let this status quo drag out for too long. The Dominion of Man shook again when the Subjugation King freely struck one of the holes in the hull with a blinding tribulation lightning strike! While the attack failed to breach the resilient transphasic hyper exterior, it still managed to create a long trench that looked like an ugly scar on the surface of the dreadnought. Dozens of gun batteries and other exterior modules got blasted to pieces from this powerful attack. The Dominion of Man continued to suffer greater and greater harm as long as the clone of the Subjugation King remained free to launch his attacks. Ves gritted his teeth as he tried to shoulder bash the energy barrier, only to get shocked and bounced away yet again! None of his attacks interrupted the Subjugation King's actions! So long as the powerful clone continued to shelter inside his extremely powerful energy barrier, he remained immune to any interruption from others. This left the Subjugation King free to charge up his big attacks and unleash devastation from his stationary position! Few Dread Marines were able to survive his tribulation light strikes. The clone of the God King outclassed the mortal soldiers to such a massive extent that their defenses simply weren't in the same league. Despite the helpful feedback gained from punching the energy barrier, Ves was not fighting for himself at the moment. He was fighting for the survival of his creations. The continued existence of Caramond and the Dominion of Man were at stake. If Ves failed to figure out a way to hinder and defeat the clone of the Subjugation King, the dreadnought would eventually be brought to her breaking point! This was the unspoken way in which the God King applied pressure on his valued slave. Ves needed to shore up his combat abilities and fight hard enough to force the clone to stop wrecking the ship, but that was easier said than done! He was not a professional soldier! He was not a combat-oriented cultivator! The only way he could gain an advantage over the clone was to rely on external factors such as weapons. It was rather stupid to think that a mech designer like himself could defeat a superior opponent barehanded. Unfortunately, his best 'weapons', if he could even treat them in this regard, were the mechs that he designed! The absence of mechs irritated him a lot. He was a mech designer and poured a huge amount of time and effort into making them strong enough to defeat powerful opponents. Though he doubted that his second-class expert mechs were strong enough to make his current adversary shake, it would have been nice if he had received enough time and forewarning to prepare a bunch of first-class mechs. Even if that was not possible, Ves regretted his decision not to develop a few pieces of equipment that he could make use of in his true body form! He supposed he could summon the Oceancaller and scale it to the size of a polearm, but Ves already concluded that he wouldn't be able to produce any better results. He lacked the skills to leverage the weapon effectively enough to strike much harder than what he was able to accomplish with a straightforward shoulder bash. Ves needed to come up with new tricks in order to inflict actual damage to the clone. The Subjugation King himself already told him that. He just did not expect to be put under so much pressure. There was no reasonable way he could become as skilled in combat as Ketis or any other decent soldier for that matter in the span of half an hour or less. The best solution he could think of is to create a combat-oriented incarnation on the spot, but this was no time for him to create any new products. He was sure the Subjugation King would strike him with a tribulation lightning bolt if he dared to engage in production rather than actual combat! What else could he do to get himself out of this predicament? He could enter the Mech Designer System. So long as time in the outside reality remained frozen, he could spend a large amount of time on thinking over his problem. He could also go on another Mission spree and work hard to earn as many Ascension Points as possible to extend his stay in the System Space. Once he earned enough AP, he could purchase an expensive enlightenment fruit that taught him how to fight like a cultivator. Ves recalled the time where he gifted Venerable Tusa Billingsley-Larkinson with the Shadow Dance Dagger Style Enlightenment Fruit. From the moment his cousin ingested the fruit, Tusa instantly became a highly skilled practitioner of the extraordinary fighting style! Of course, it already helped that Tusa had a strong foundation as a melee fighter. Ves did not expect to turn into an instant master in whatever combat style he learned from an enlightenment fruit, but anything was better than nothing! This certainly sounded like a viable plan, but… Ves was reluctant to go through with this course of action. It wasn't because he felt this was a form of cheating. Sure, his pride insisted that he should overcome this challenge by relying on honest effort as opposed to an out-of-context factor. However, since the Subjugation King already bent or broke the rules when he chose to interfere in this tribulation event, Ves would hardly be at fault if he proceeded to exploit a few loopholes. The real issue was that Ves was deeply afraid of exposing the Mech Designer System to the Subjugation King. Ves had no way of telling whether the God King already sensed the presence of the fragment of the Metal Scroll and everything that came with it. This might be part of the reason why the Subjugation King took the effort to plant a soul mark. It would be safer to assume that the Mech Designer System remained a secret. Ves was not willing to expose this particular secret, especially not when it wouldn't make a meaningful difference. Ingesting a combat-oriented enlightenment fruit, training in his new combat style and developing a suitable weapon was unlikely to make Ves strong enough to defeat the powerful tribulation manifestation. The gap in strength was too great. Better control and technique would certainly be helpful in allowing Ves to leverage his physical strength to a much higher degree, but it ultimately wouldn't make a difference if he still wouldn't be able to shake the defenses of the clone when he was levering 100 percent of his strength! What he actually needed to do was to increase the amount of energy at his disposal. Ves soon thought about the Spark Reactor. At this moment, Caramond and Blinky were still working hard to channel as much fire energy to the Dreadfire Legion. The mass casualties inflicted by the God King had reduced their number by a noticeable extent, but the Dread Marines bravely fought on without any thought of retreating. The deaths actually helped to make the Dreadfire Legion more effective. The fire energy wasn't being diluted as much, which meant that every ranged weapon hit a little harder than before. Yet… for all of their efforts, the base strength of a Dread Marine was still too low for all of this amplification to make a real difference in this fight. Ves turned his attention back to the clone. The tall and glowing tribulation manifestation did not bring an entourage alone. Instead, he claimed all of the power of the 9th wave, thereby attaining a concentration of power that was so high that lesser opponents no longer posed a threat anymore! His eyes suddenly lit up as he figured out a promising solution to his problem. He just needed to copy the method employed by the Subjugation King! Instead of channeling most of the fire energy generated by the Spark Reactor to the utterly useless and irrelevant Dreadfire Legion, Caramond and Blinky should be channeling all of that juicy power to Ves instead! The idea had a lot of merit, but also introduced a lot of possible risks. For one, Ves was pretty sure that it would be extremely uncomfortable for him to contain and direct such an insanely high concentration of fire energy. Ves already thought back on the time where he paid a visit to the Spark Reactor. He couldn't get any closer because the energies radiated by the living spark was too much for him to handle. However, Ves did not have any promising alternatives at this time. The problem wouldn't be as bad as long as he controlled the process and stayed below his limit. There was no time for second-guessing. Ves quickly committed to this plan. Blinky instantly conveyed the change in strategy to Caramond, who subsequently waved back his Dreadfire Legion. "You have fought long and hard, but this calls for a god! Pull back and keep your distance, for I shall challenge this alien with the help of my brave progenitor!" Caramond consciously cut off most of the supply of fire energy through the spiritual network that connected him to his Dreadfire Legion. The loss of power was incredibly noticeable as the Dread Armors no longer channeled more than a fraction of fire energy that they managed to scrounge from the background. Few Dread Marines chose to retreat back into the Dominion of Man. Each of them felt obligated to fight for the survival of Caramond and their ship. They simply obeyed their latest instruction by flying further away before they continued to bombard the clone of the God King. Even if the absence of fire energy weakened the massed attacks, they still exerted a drain on the alien manifestation's defenses. Meanwhile, now that Caramond and Blinky had rid themselves of a burden, they closed in on Ves and entered his physical body. The three entities had not quite merged, but gathered so close to each other that they were able to cooperate in a much more effective manner. "Hit me with fire energy!" "Mrow!" A large energy vortex formed around Ves as much of the fire energy directed to this side of the hull suddenly converged on Ves! The temperature rapidly grew hotter. Ves' true body physically started to heat up while his Spirituality was beginning to roast due to the concentration of so much volatile fire energy! Ves was pretty sure that he would have blown up already if not for Caramond's efforts to control the concentrated fire energy. As it was, it would be a bad idea to continue with piling up so much output from the Spark Reactor! Ves believed he had barely gained the raw power to pose an actual threat to the clone of the Subjugation King. That still did not mean he was able to harness this power properly. He and Blinky had learned a lot on how to manipulate fire energy over the course of this lightning tribulation, but they wouldn't be able to manipulate it as well as Ves controlled water energy when he played the Oceancaller. Caramond gave Ves the equivalent of a spiritual squeeze. The ancestral spirit had grown and matured by quite an extent after all of this time. "Do not despair, my progenitor. You are not a soldier, but I was modeled after one of the best of one. Let me take control, and I will promise you that I shall vanquish this dreadful inhuman pest. The pride of humanity must not falter to this dastardly alien's scheme!"